30k: How Good Is Armillus Dynat of the Alpha Legion?

Hail Hydra! Today I’m going to review one of the Alpha Legion’s most notorious characters: Armillus Dynat!

The other remaining characters are the Primarch himself Alpharius Omegon, Exodus, and Autilon Skorr. I will go over Skorr in my next post as he is likely to be my warlord in most games with my Alpha Legion so he will get a whole post detailing tactics and synergy around his rules. I will also go over the additional consul type that you can take as an Alpha legion, the saboteur in the same post.

Armillus Dynat

Armillus Dynat (picture above) is the Harrowmaster of the Alpha Legion, essentially top dog below the Primarch and he wants you to know it! I would rate him as better than any customisable character you can build for the Alpha Legion as his wargear, special rules and importantly points cost are all extremely competitive.

However much like everything with the Alpha Legion, you need to truly consider his rules and how they synergise with the rest of your army. His abilities can be absolutely wasted in the wrong army.

Armillus has praetor level stats but has an extra wound making him a T4 four wound 2+/4++ HQ as he has the standard iron halo. In addition to his impressive stats he also has 4 special rules:

Jealous Command: Must be Warlord unless Alpharius is Present

Hammer Strike Assault : If warlord his warlord trait is Hammer Strike Assault which allows any unit the ability to deep strike and re-roll the scatter dice.

The Harrowing: This special rule is the real deal. It allows any Alpha Legion unit to re-roll sweeping advances and add +1 to the vehicle damage table WHILST in the opponent deployment zone.

Weapon Mastery: This allows Armillus to pick and choose which weapon he attacks with for each individual attack – fantastic given his wargear (see below).

In addition to his special rules Dynat has a thunder hammer, a power sword, phosphex bombs, a cognis signum, venom spheres and krak grenades. The combination of the hammer and sword allow Dynat to effectively take on marines at initiative and AP3 or to buff his strength to 8 and his AP2 but strike last.

Phosphex bombs are 6 inch ranged strength 5 AP2 one use only poisoned (3+) grenades that you can adjust the scatter of by 2 inches after normal scatter provided it covers more models and also turns that area into dangerous terrain.

Bizarrely, beyond grenades Armillus has no gun. HOWEVER I think this is deliberate as it means that every round he can use his cognis signum to grant +1 BS to a single unit within 6 inches. This could be absolutely devastating if he is next to a Sicaran venator and you really need a tank to explode! Equally you can apply it to a squad of veterans with meltaguns or a 20 man squad using Fury of the Legion (allows bolters to fire twice including rapid fire so 4 shots each within 12 inches but can’t fire next turn). I feel his lack of a ranged weapon is because of this personally, or just happenstance!

Overall: 

I really really like Armillus Dynat (plus his model is lovely), he has the staying power in combat to take on pretty much any generic character and a lot of named ones but keep him away from any of the big hitters. However you NEED to plan your army around his special rules. He naturally engenders himself towards an Alpha strike list (Irony!) such that you are immediately in the enemies deployment zone and are able to take full advantage of the Harrowing special rule. Drop pod Based units using the orbital assault rite of war would make perfect sense with Armillus.

Given that you have the Alpha Legions Mutable tactics on top of this, depending on whether you are facing a mech heavy or infantry heavy army you can adapt your rules choice to reflect this. If mech heavy then pick tank hunters as your mutable tactic and deep strike in and blow those tanks up with your +1 on the damage table and your tank hunter re-roll.

If infantry heavy then choose counter attack and deep strike in. You will have more attacks if charged giving you a better advantage of winning combat and taking advantage of the sweeping advance re-roll as well.

Alpha legion is all about Synergy and Armillus Dynat is a good example of how you have to take that word seriously with this legion to prevent your lists becoming a mish mash mismatch of special rules that don’t fit together.